Earnings Call Transcript - DV Q4 2025

Operator, Operator

Hello, and thank you for standing by. My name is Bella, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to DoubleVerify Q4 2025 Earnings Conference Call. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brinlea Johnson. You may begin.

Brinlea Johnson, Host

Good afternoon, and welcome to DoubleVerify's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. With us today are Mark Zagorski, CEO; and Nicola Allais, CFO. Today's press release and this call may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties, and changes and reflect our current expectations and information currently available to us, and our actual results could differ materially. For more information, please refer to the risk factors in our recent SEC filings, including our Form 10-Q and our annual report or Form 10-K. In addition, our discussion today will include references to certain supplemental non-GAAP financial measures and should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for our GAAP results. Reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measures are available in today's earnings press release, which is available on our Investor Relations website. Also, during the call today, we'll be referring to the slide deck posted on our website. With that, I'll turn it over to Mark.

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Thanks, Brinlea, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me start today's call with a quick take on the most recent quarter. In Q4, we delivered a strong 38% adjusted EBITDA margin and 8% year-over-year growth in revenue, demonstrating the strength of our operating model even as revenue came in below expectations. As we mentioned last quarter, while we anticipated some retail softness, our results were impacted by further pullbacks of a customer campaign spend late in the quarter, primarily due to agency-related changes. We saw no broad-based spend decreases or detachment of DV services and noted exceptional strength across multiple sectors in the fourth quarter, including healthcare and technology. We reported strong customer retention during the quarter with no new deactivations among our Top 100 customers in Q4 and usage across social and streaming TV continues to scale. In addition, our Programmatic business continued to grow, with nearly two-thirds of the impressions that we engage with delivered on mobile, in-app, and mobile web environments. Outside of mobile, both programmatic display and video measurement impressions grew at double-digit rates in 2025. The investments we are making in building durable, diversified long-term growth in sectors that continue to thrive alongside the AI revolution, namely social, streaming, and AI platforms, are becoming core catalysts for our future growth. Social activation accelerated meaningfully, growing at approximately 60% year-over-year in Q4 and starting 2026 at an even stronger year-over-year growth rate. And Authentic AdVantage on YouTube is entering the year with $8 million of expected ACV. CTV measurement impression volumes also grew impressively, up 22% for the quarter, continuing their cadence of outsized growth. We also saw strong interest in our ABS-enabled Do-Not-Air-Lists for Streaming TV, which entered general availability with a strong debut this January with three top 15 customers, representing hundreds of millions in CTV spend implementing prebid controls. AI measurement tools like SlopStopper and Agent ID showed meaningful engagement rates and are now being tested by six of our largest customers, with a broader rollout scheduled for the coming months. Together, the areas which are most important for a durable growth story in the future are setting us up for a strong 2026. Before turning to the full year 2025 results, I want to discuss the continuing evolution of our product-led growth cycle and what is really on everyone's mind, our take on the potential impact of AI on advertising and DV's business. DV's growth cycle and trajectory are foundationally shaped by the timing of product releases, platform enablement, and customer adoption. Over the last year, our new product development cycle accelerated across social, CTV, and AI platforms, with several major releases rolling out in the fourth quarter of 2025. With Social and CTV innovation now broadly available and AI capabilities continue to expand, we've entered 2026 with a more diversified revenue mix driven by a broader product offering. These new solutions fuel two main product-led growth engines. First, we have a significant opportunity to expand within our existing customer base. As we elevate product attach rates for our new Social, CTV and AI Platform Verification capabilities, we drive higher wallet share, spur revenue growth, and create broader, stickier client relationships as enterprise customers adopt more of our platform. As a result, average revenue per top 100 customers grew by 7% for the year to $4.5 million. Second, our accelerating product cycle is enabling us to win new customers and gain market share with proprietary solutions as entry points to new customer engagements. Our leadership in the fastest-growing areas of digital advertising, Social, CTV, and AI-enabled performance optimization is expanding our relevance, increasing our competitiveness, and landing us new logos. These differentiated solutions drove a 90% greenfield win ratio in Q4, our highest ever recorded, meaning that we are winning deals with solutions in new areas in which there are no competitive incumbents to displace. Ultimately, our product innovation in 2025 harnessed the power of AI to expand TAM, improved solution efficacy, and drove stronger margins, and also helped deliver solid results that will set the stage for future growth. We grew total full-year revenue 14% year-over-year, well exceeding the 10% growth outlook we provided at the start of the year. We also delivered double-digit growth across all three revenue lines. We continue to onboard large global enterprise customers, further strengthening our position as a trusted partner to the world's leading brands. This momentum delivered strong profitability and cash generation with a 33% adjusted full-year EBITDA margin and $211 million in net cash from operating activities. Now turning to the impact of AI on marketer behavior and more importantly, for this call on DV's business. To put it simply, we see this evolution only in terms of accretive future opportunities for DV. The ad ecosystem has always been one in constant flux, where marketers buy ads, how they buy ads, and even how they create those ads changes with each advancement of media and technology. The current AI revolution is just the next evolution of this story. And all of these evolutionary cycles, what has never changed is why marketers buy ads, their need for measurement and their demand for trust and transparency. Whether it was ad networks in 2010, programmatic platforms in 2018, social networks in 2021, or agent-based AI platform buying in 2026 and beyond, DV has been and will be essential in driving transparency and trust. Regardless of changes in media or mode of buying, our customer value proposition lies in the vast amount of data we gather and the trust layer that supports the unbiased independent analytics we provide. In the AI era, the question isn't about who has the best model. It's about who has the best data. DV generates a massive proprietary data set from the hundreds of terabytes of advertising data we process every day across trillions of annual transactions. This isn't generic web data that anyone can access or scrape. These are proprietary signals tied to actual ad delivery, brand suitability, fraud detection, and business outcomes based on contracted relationships with leading platforms. LLMs can help us interpret this data faster and more efficiently, but they cannot replace its unique value. DV has never been about the media or the method, but about the data supporting the motive. In addition, OpenAI's introduction of advertising marks the creation of an entirely new digital media environment, and DV is ready for this evolution. According to e-Marketer, ad spend on LLMs is expected to grow to over $25 billion by 2029, cannibalizing over 14% of search spend, which is a $400 billion market that DV has historically not been able to access. We believe advertising within LLM platforms has the potential to create a new search-like digital channel where independent verification from companies like DV becomes foundational. Independent metrics in this new environment are critical, and several dozen of our current customers who are experimenting in this new space have already indicated that they expect consistent measurement across everywhere they advertise. While AI platform ad models continue to evolve, advertiser demands remain the same, ensuring ad transactions are trusted and transparent, and ads are reviewable, brand suitable, and delivered to legitimate traffic within authentic content environments. As digital advertising becomes more automated, agentic, and opaque, as AI slop becomes the must-avoid content category for advertisers, the need for independent verification, protection, and performance measurement has never been greater. Regardless of platform, buying mode, or message, DV will be an integral trusted part of this ad equation. Building on our progress in product innovation in 2025, I'll now walk through the updates on our key three product cycles. Starting with Social, Streaming TV and closing with AI. As noted on previous calls, our goal is to increase the contribution of social, streaming, and AI-driven solutions from under 30% of total revenue today to approximately 50%, creating a revenue mix that more closely aligns with global digital ad spend trends. Starting with Social, it remains our fastest-growing environment and a core driver of our next phase of growth. As I mentioned earlier, Social Activation accelerated meaningfully to approximately 60% year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter, up from around 20% growth in Q3. That acceleration was driven by continued scaling of Social Prebid, building upon Meta's specific product enhancements that we upgraded through the year. Expanded content level avoidance across feed and reels nearly doubled filtering coverage and materially improved activation effectiveness. By year-end, 68 advertisers were live on Meta activation, up from 56 in the third quarter. Adoption is being driven by large enterprise advertisers, with 28 coming from our top 100 clients. We exited December with Social Activation at an annualized run rate of approximately $8 million, ahead of our expectations, and it continues to be our fastest-growing area as we start 2026. Adoption of DV Authentic AdVantage on YouTube also expanded during the quarter with estimated ACV of approximately $8 million driven by continued customer adoption. Some of our largest CPG customers have started scaling on the solution, and we are excited about the opportunity to grow this business over the coming quarters. Also driving social growth into 2026, we expanded attention measurement on TikTok during the fourth quarter, becoming the platform's first badged marketing partner to deliver impression-level attention insights. In addition, we expanded our post-bid brand suitability measure on Meta to include Facebook Reel Overlay placements, extending independent transparency across one of the platform's fastest-growing ad formats. Finally, we expanded our integration with Meta through the launch of Rockerbox Relay, which enables Rockerbox customers to send attribution results to Meta as an optimization signal. This launch improves advertisers' ability to drive performance against outcomes. Turning to Streaming TV. 2025 marked an important inflection point in our expanding CTV strategy. Over the course of the year, we launched a series of products to address growing advertiser transparency demands and increasing fraud in streaming environments, including verified Streaming TV measurement and pre-bid controls, automated Do-Not-Air workflows, and enriched program level intelligence through our licensing of IMDb data. We've already begun to see solid early adoption of ABS Do-Not-Air Lists from our largest advertisers as well as strong interest in our Authentic Streaming TV solution, which we launched at CES in January. Expanding our growing CTV footprint, we launched our integration with LinkedIn to deliver measurement for CTV impressions. This expansion extends DV's independent verification and authentication to LinkedIn CTV ads across existing streaming environments, increasing measured CTV coverage and reinforcing DV's leadership in transparent cross-channel media measurement. Together, these innovations helped grow CTV measurement volumes by 33% in the full year 2025, reflecting continued advertiser demand for independent transparency in streaming environments. As mentioned previously, the tools that we launched in 2025 to combat the increasing challenge of navigating AI slop are gaining traction with our largest customers. This momentum will be bolstered in the first half of 2026 with the launch of DV SlopStopper for Social, a premium solution to address a content arena rife with issues that advertisers are eager to avoid on platforms that attract the lion's share of advertiser spend. 2025 was a year of product development acceleration, partner expansion, meaningful growth across all of our business lines, and continued strong margins and cash flow. Before turning it over to Nicola, I want to briefly address capital allocation. Returning capital to shareholders is a core element of our long-term value creation strategy. And as of today, we have $300 million authorized for share repurchases, the largest amount in DV's history, which we plan to actively deploy in 2026 at increased levels versus prior years. This reflects our confidence in our business, the continued strength of our balance sheet, and our commitment to creating long-term shareholder value. With that, let me turn the call over to Nicola.

Nicola Allais, CFO

Thanks, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me walk through our fourth quarter and full year 2025 results and then discuss our 2026 outlook, including the key growth drivers and assumptions underlying our guidance. For the fourth quarter, revenue was $206 million, representing 8% year-over-year growth. For the full year, revenue was $748 million, representing 14% year-over-year growth despite variability driven by the retail sector in the second half. In the fourth quarter, activation revenue increased 6% year-over-year, and measurement revenue increased 8% year-over-year, both driven primarily by Social. In the fourth quarter, Social Activation and Measurement together represented approximately 19% of total revenue. Supply side revenue increased 17% year-over-year, supported by retail media platforms and expanded publisher and platform integrations. In the fourth quarter, total advertiser revenue, which includes activation and measurement grew 7% year-over-year driven by 8% growth in volume or MTM, partially offset by a 3% decline in price or MTF, excluding the impact of an introductory fixed fee arrangement from one large customer onboarding from Moat. Fourth quarter activation revenue grew 6%, with ABS representing 52% of activation revenue in the quarter. As of year-end, 78% of our Top 500 clients were using ABS. Measurement revenue grew 8% year-over-year, with Social measurement revenue increasing 11% and representing 49% of measurement revenue and international revenue increasing 5% and representing 29% of measurement revenue. Excluding the previously disclosed CPG customer suspension at the start of the year, social measurement revenue would have grown 22% in 2025. Finally, revenue from Rockerbox was slightly ahead of expectations. Turning to full year 2025. Revenue grew 14% driven by double-digit growth across each revenue line, including 15% growth in activation, 10% growth in measurement, and 25% growth in supply side. Advertising revenue growth remained primarily volume driven, with MTMs increasing 15% year-over-year to $9.5 trillion billable transactions measured, partially offset by a 3% decrease in MTF to $0.07 excluding the impact of an introductory fixed fee arrangement for one large customer onboarded from Moat. We expect volumes to remain the primary driver of growth in 2026, as we continue to verify more digital ad impressions through new product launches and through new channel and geographic expansion. Supply side revenue grew 25% year-over-year by adding new CTV and digital platform partnerships and through continued expansion on retail media networks, with DV tags now accepted across 152 retail media networks, including 18 major platforms and 134 retailers globally. For the full year, we achieved a net revenue retention rate of 109%, and gross revenue retention remained above 95% for the fifth consecutive year. Average revenue for Top 100 customers increased by 7% year-over-year to $4.5 million, and we ended the year with 344 advertisers generating more than $200,000 annually. Our long-term customer relationships remain strong with Top 75, Top 50, and Top 25 customers working with DV for approximately nine years. Moving to expenses. In the fourth quarter, we delivered 83% revenue less cost of sales and $78 million of adjusted EBITDA, representing a 38% margin. For the full year, we delivered 82% revenue less cost of sales and $246 million of adjusted EBITDA, representing a 33% adjusted EBITDA margin to combine continued revenue growth with solid profitability. We ended 2025 with 1,231 employees slightly down year-over-year, excluding the impact of the Rockerbox acquisition. In 2026, we expect to continue to invest in AI capabilities that will enable us to maintain revenue less cost of sales over 80%, accelerate product development and time to market while also growing with fewer employees through improved productivity across the organization. This will allow us to scale the business more effectively and increase EBITDA margins in 2026. Turning to cash flow. We generated approximately $211 million in net cash from operating activities in 2025. Capital expenditures were approximately $39 million or 5% of total revenue, driven by investments in innovation and platform scalability. This resulted in free cash flow of approximately $173 million, representing a conversion rate of approximately 70%, up from 61% in 2024 and reinforcing the durability of our cash-generating model. Our strong cash generation enabled us to repurchase 8.4 million shares for approximately $132 million in 2025, outpacing stock-based compensation expense and driving a net reduction in shares outstanding of approximately 3%. We ended 2025 with approximately 162 million shares outstanding, approximately $260 million in cash and no long-term debt, providing us with significant flexibility to invest in growth, pursue strategic opportunities and return capital to shareholders. Reflecting continued confidence in our financial strength and long-term growth prospects, we have, as of today, $300 million authorized for share repurchases, which we plan to deploy in 2026 at increased levels versus prior years. Now turning to 2026 guidance. For the first quarter, we expect revenue to range between $177 million and $183 million, representing a year-over-year increase of approximately 9% at the midpoint and adjusted EBITDA to range between $48 million and $52 million, representing a 28% adjusted EBITDA margin at the midpoint. To provide context, fourth quarter growth of 8% reflected elevated retail pressure driven by campaign pullback late in the quarter from a couple of large customers. Based on the current momentum we have seen to date, our first quarter guidance is 9% growth despite a 17% growth comparison in the first quarter of last year. This improvement reflects expected higher contributions from our recently launched Social and CTV products, along with continued sector diversification towards healthcare and technology. For full year 2026, we expect revenue to range between $810 million and $826 million, representing an 8% to 10% year-over-year increase. Our full-year revenue outlook is driven by a recurring base of growth of core products to core clients, which is reflected in our net revenue retention of 109% in 2025. Incremental growth in 2026 off the base will be driven by three product-led growth engines: first, adoption and scale deployment of the recently launched solutions across Social and Streaming TV; second, incremental revenue growth from existing enterprise clients scaling across our product offering; and third, continued new customer acquisition driven by DV's differentiated MAP product vision, which integrates independent verification with real-time optimization and outcomes measurement. Our 8% to 10% year-over-year revenue growth guidance assumes a measured take on the impact of these product-led growth drivers as they scale in 2026 and doesn't assume an improved macro advertising environment. In terms of quarterly growth cadence, 2026 shapes into a stronger second half growth as we lap 19% growth in the first half of 2025 as compared to 9% growth in the second half of 2025. For full year 2026, we expect adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 34%. We're guiding to an increased adjusted EBITDA margin of 34% in 2026 as compared to 33% over the last three years, reflecting our ability to grow the business more efficiently while improving productivity across the organization. Below the line, we're implementing an updated equity incentive plan that is projected to reduce the annual value of equity grants by over 40% as compared to 2025. As a result, we expect full year stock-based compensation to decline year-on-year and range between $102 million to $107 million. For the first quarter, we expect stock-based compensation of approximately $23 million to $26 million and weighted average fully diluted shares outstanding of approximately 164 million. We expect capital expenditures, including capitalized software to be approximately $46 million in 2026, reflecting continued investment in product innovation, AI-driven automation, and platform scalability. With zero debt and approximately $260 million of cash on the balance sheet at the end of 2025, we remain well-positioned to invest in growth and execute on our capital return strategy. In closing, 2025 was a year of product evolution for DoubleVerify. We launched the next generation of Social, Streaming TV, and AI products, delivered growth, maintained strong margins, generating meaningful cash flow, and returned capital to shareholders. As we move into 2026, we're well-positioned with a more diversified business, a clear focus on durable growth, and expanding profitability to deliver long-term shareholder value. And with that, we will open up the line for questions.

Operator, Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Matt Swanson with RBC Capital Markets.

Matt Swanson, Analyst

Mark, I really enjoyed all the color you were giving us on the kind of AI opportunities and maybe kind of explained to us why the risks might not be what some of the market participants might think they are. I also loved the name SlopStopper. But if you go a little bit deeper into just kind of what inning you think we are in terms of like this AI revolution, whether it be from the content side or from like your internal products? And just how you think this is going to play out throughout 2026, but also kind of the changes you might be making for the long term.

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Yes. Thanks for the question, Matt. And I would say for both internal and external opportunities, we're in the early first inning. Like we're just scratching the surface right now, which makes it so exciting. As we noted, we see AI as nothing but a huge opportunity for DV. Our role in the ecosystem has always been one to provide trust and transparency in buying, and whether those are agents buying or DSPs buying or an executive sitting behind a keyboard somewhere 15 years ago, we've always played that role. And when we think about those opportunities internally, they're about efficiency and driving operating margin. And as you saw, we were able to raise our guide this year on our EBITDA expectations. A lot of that is driven by the fact that the things that we do, contextualize content, try to stamp out fraud, and drive greater transparency. All those things are done faster, more seamlessly, and cheaper through AI. We mentioned before, double the classification volume, already 4x the productivity, and 2,300x faster labeling of content. All of those things are real lifts for our business and drive better margins. On the outside and the external, we look at not only the universe of challenging content that AI creates as being an opportunity. So as you mentioned, SlopStopper, we'll be expanding that into Social later on this year and looking at AI as an opportunity for optimization through Authentic AdVantage as well as just this big meatball that's out there is the chatbots, which are now running advertising. And just as the other venues that we've entered, whether it was CTV through Netflix or Social when we added Reddit in the last few years, that new platform is going to need verification. We've got many of our customers already leaning in there and spending money and saying, 'You guys need to be here next.' So lots of opportunities to be more efficient, lots of opportunities to build new products, and lots of opportunities to add new platforms to our mix, all driven by AI.

Matt Swanson, Analyst

I appreciate that. Are we sticking to the one question?

Mark Zagorski, CEO

You could ask another, Matt, go ahead.

Matt Swanson, Analyst

All right. The other one I was going to ask was just on the MAP side and just kind of early responses you've seen from the bundling strategies that you laid out at your Analyst Day. So just anything. I know it's still early, but anything you're hearing from your customers right now?

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Yes. So it's been a really solid response to our first integrated product, which is Authentic AdVantage. That's for YouTube, that is bundling together prebid social filtering plus post-bid measurement plus optimization on YouTube. That helped drive Social Activation to 60% growth year-over-year. And we're seeing an even stronger growth rate coming out of the gate on Social Activation. So that strategy is working. It's also working to introduce new customers to totally new solutions within our realm. We mentioned that really extremely high greenfield win rate for Q4 of 90%. That means 90% of the customers that we won that quarter weren't using a competitive product in that space. That means we're bringing in new customers into total use solutions, bringing them into that MAP system and giving them the ability to upsell over time. So it's been early, but I think we're getting really good results out of the initial solutions we've launched from the MAP strategy.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Condon with Citizens.

Matt Condon, Analyst

First question, I just really wanted to ask on what happened at the end of the quarter. Just what are you seeing? It seems like there's some agency partnerships, but maybe there are some pullback in spend. I was just wondering if you could elaborate on that. And just what gives you the confidence that you have in the 1Q and the implied acceleration of revenue growth?

Nicola Allais, CFO

Yes. So I'll take that. So what happened at the end of the quarter is related to the retail vertical. We had talked about that during the third quarter already and I had already mentioned that as a little challenged in terms of ad spend. And that continued into Q4 as we had expected. What we didn't expect is towards the end of the quarter, additional pullback from specific customers that were going through agency changes. That was not something that we had anticipated when we had given the Q4 guidance. Now that leads us to an ending growth rate in Q4 of 8%. We're guiding to 9% going into Q1 2026, and that's based on visibility that we have to date into the quarter, an uptick from the Social and CTV products that we just launched, and generally not seeing a continued degradation around the retail sector. In offsetting the retail sector, I have to say healthcare and technology did very well for us in 2025. We're entering '26 for a more diversified mix across verticals with retail representing less than it used to in prior years. So we feel good about being able to diversify the mix across the various verticals.

Matt Condon, Analyst

Great. And maybe just a quick follow-up, Mark, just as we think about social prepaid ramping here, it's good to see the progress continue. But how do we get that to even grow faster in 2026? And how are you planning on just driving further adoption?

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Yes. So we saw really strong social activation, as we noted, up almost to 70 customers now on Meta prebid and a large number of our Top 10, Top 15, Top 20 customers now engaged in some pretty big brands, right? So folks like Lilly, Inspire Brands, Capital One, and even better themselves. So big brands out there spending on the platform. Now it's just about scaling. There's always a testing process. There's always a testing cycle. And the great news is we've launched increasingly accurate, increasingly powerful versions of this solution on a regular basis. As it gets more accurate, as it gets to be a more effective arbiter of eliminating waste and finding challenges on those platforms, it's easier uptake for us. So we see that as a really nice acceleration pace, particularly across Meta. And again, right now, it's outpacing our expectations, and we hope that will continue through the year.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs.

Alexander Vegliante, Analyst

This is Alex Vegliante on for Eric Sheridan. I just want to dig into some of the investments you're making this year to support the product development. Any planned investments in go-to-market to support the adoption curve of some of these social prebid products? Or will the investments that you're making and what's implied in your guide just be more concentrated on product development and AI?

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Yes. As far as kind of headcounts and people investments, we're actually looking to stabilize or decrease those over time. The efficiencies that we're getting out of AI tools have been exceptional and particularly when it comes to classification and our ability to do what we do best, which is identify challenging content and drive greater transparency and trust. We're doing that with fewer people at a faster pace and more accurately. So efficiencies there. As far as go-to-market, I think we have a great team out there. We spent the last few years building out a super engaged global sales team. They've gotten deeper and deeper into brands. Eight of our top 10 relationships are now brand direct. And I think that we've got the right folks in the right place telling the right story with the right products, and that is going to continue to drive growth for us throughout the year.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Pitz with BMO.

Brian Pitz, Analyst

Mark, maybe a follow-on regarding category comments. I know CPG has been challenging for you in the past few quarters. Has that category recovered? Any comments would be helpful. And then any additional color on specific growth drivers going forward? What are the key success factors? Really how is your guidance range?

Nicola Allais, CFO

Yes, I'll take the first question, Brian. The actually CPG did well. And as you'll recall, we had one client at the beginning of the year, suspending its service with us. But the category did well because we acquired clients in 2024 that scaled into 2025. So on balance, that category did well. There obviously are pressures that are tied to CPG that also impact retail. We saw it more on the retail side than on the CPG side. But I think CPG has remained strong for us because of the fact that we have large clients that are scaling within the product portfolio that we have.

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Yes. And then just as far as growth catalysts that we're really focused on, we kind of hammered them in the script, which is our social tools and social solutions. So expanding Authentic AdVantage beyond just YouTube and looking at TikTok as well as Meta. Expanding our SlopStopper solution into social and walled gardens, which I think is going to be a huge hit. And then continuing to invest in CTV, and right now our ABS Do-Not-Air List is really live on Trade Desk, but we've got the opportunity to expand that to additional DSPs. So I think for us, it's all about a focus on social, a focus on CTV, and then our AI tools that cover both of those products with an opportunity out there; as the AI platform starts to scale advertising, looking at that down the road is a big opportunity for us as well.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Tim Nollen with SSR.

Timothy Nollen, Analyst

I'd like to come back to the CTV topic, if I could. TV has always had its own measurement systems and the TV network groups have never historically relied on their own platforms to provide the measurement and attribution reporting. So I'm curious, what is different about CTV for you guys versus web or mobile? Meaning, is it easier for you to penetrate this medium given your differentiated tools that you can bring to CTV now? Or is it difficult given how TV measurement has always operated under its own terms?

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Yes, it's a great question. I think the difference in the CTV universe versus the linear universe is the fact that the metrics that advertisers are using to evaluate success go well beyond just reach and frequency, right? They go to driving results, and effectiveness of results. But you also have challenges to that. So things like fraud pop up, things like screen is not being on while ads are playing, you've got views which drive viewability issues, which all drive the effectiveness of CTV. So I think our role in CTV is a different role than the measurement companies played in the kind of linear world. And our role is not just to determine whether or not something works but determine whether or not something is valid. And that's why we see more and more advertisers turning us on, and our scale growing significantly. In CTV, we saw a 33% year-over-year growth in volume because, again, it's a world that's not as transparent as the linear world has been. We see bigger opportunities there as advertisers demand greater transparency. So getting show level data on a granular basis and being able to expose that. We're already doing some of that and we're starting to do that at scale with our Authentic Streaming TV solution because, believe it or not, advertisers, in many cases, on a lot of programmatic platforms are buying CTV that's not really CTV. We can ensure that it was delivered on a full episode player in a highly branded environment. So those things are starting to become a bigger and bigger deal to advertisers as the billions and billions of dollars of advertising scale quite a bit. So I think we play a unique role in that universe. I think that role continues to expand as we see CTV volumes expand. And the number of tools that we provide to address those problems is going to grow over time.

Operator, Operator

The next question comes from the line of Alinda Li with William Blair.

Alinda Li, Analyst

Awesome. I wanted to just learn about how have conversations evolved with the driving interest of AI solutions? And have you observed any changes in customer interest in the way that you're looking in approaches?

Mark Zagorski, CEO

It's a really interesting question. A lot of the discussion around advertising and agentic-based tools is still quite early. Most buying is still being done through programmatic platforms or platform-enabled tools on social networks. Advertisers want to make sure that what they're purchasing is what they expect and will deliver the expected results. That's the role we play on those platforms and will continue to play with agents as that area scales. The conversation with most advertisers right now is about how we will operate in this new landscape and what role we will assume. I believe our role will remain focused on driving trust and transparency. In future scenarios, an agent will search for a buy and ensure its safety by contacting us first, similar to how a DSP reaches out to us, and we'll respond quickly to confirm its status. We are prepared for that evolution, which is exciting. Additionally, discussions about AI must emphasize the importance of leveraging these tools with human oversight to guarantee that what we refer to as brand suitability is both relevant and trustworthy. Our accreditations guide our actions, and the efficiencies we're achieving from AI and contextualization are always overseen by humans because we value that aspect. Our customers do too. Another point is that more advertisers are expressing frustration about their ads appearing alongside inappropriate content. This is concerning, especially considering predictions that in a few years, a significant portion of online content will be AI-generated, with varying quality. This is where we intend to step in, as we have with made-for-advertising content, and address the challenges presented by low-quality AI content. We have numerous questions to tackle, all of which are important and areas where we are actively developing solutions and building trust.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Laura Martin with Needham.

Laura Martin, Analyst

Sure. My first one is on events. So you guys are two months in the year, three-month quarter, and I'm really surprised the guidance for Q1. Is it for more of an acceleration given the social media talking about Bad Buddy and the Super Bowl and all of the social drama around the Olympics that ended up on social media? So can you remind us like why those big events don't drive higher impression and therefore, faster growth rates for you?

Mark Zagorski, CEO

I think volumes are still increasing rapidly in the social space. Our products in this area are still in the early stages. For instance, we ended the year with Social Activation growing by 60%. We are beginning this year with an even higher growth rate. Those numbers are rising quickly. Additionally, we are now overlapping with the customer whose services we paused last year, which was a significant social customer. As a result, we expect to see substantial growth in social during Q1, driven by that engagement and events activity. Looking ahead, we have an exciting year planned with elections, the Olympics, and the World Cup, all of which will be interesting to observe as they influence activity across social media, the open web, streaming, or a combination of all of these.

Laura Martin, Analyst

Okay, great. My other question is about pricing. I'm disappointed to bring this up, Mark. When we went public, your average price was $0.09, and now it's down to $0.07. I feel like over the past four years, you’ve invested in exciting new products and capabilities and have been bundling them, yet we're facing pricing pressure. While a 3% decline in pricing sounds manageable, it seems more severe due to a one-time Moat customer that had a fixed fee contract. What’s happening with pricing? Why is there pricing pressure despite all the value being added to the product?

Nicola Allais, CFO

Yes, Laura, I'll address the first part of your question regarding what is currently driving the price decrease. The main factor is the shift in mix between certain environments where we offer a complete range of fully penetrated products, specifically ABS as a premium-priced option, and measurement for the open web. On the social media front, we have developed new products and are increasing our penetration of premium-priced offerings compared to the measurement services we've had for some time. As impressions transition from the open web to social media, we are not seeing an equivalent dollar-for-dollar exchange until our pre-bid social premium products gain more market share. The positive aspect is that with the availability of our product, we expect to see the advantages of the premium-priced option. I can confirm that on the social side, we can charge a premium price similarly to how we charge premium pricing for ABS as opposed to basic brand safety and measurement.

Operator, Operator

Our last question comes from the line of Youssef Squali with Truist Securities.

Youssef Squali, Analyst

All right. Nicola, could you help clarify a few points you mentioned earlier? Your net revenue retention is approximately 109%. You're expecting growth for the year to be between 8% and 10%, and you indicated that performance or growth should improve in the second half compared to the first half, yet you're projecting Q1 growth at 9%. Can you explain where my calculations might be off? It seems to suggest that you should ideally be growing at least at the upper end of that range, potentially even higher. Or is there an expectation that net revenue retention might decline slightly?

Nicola Allais, CFO

We have the right dynamics in place. To clarify our perspective, our 2026 outlook is based on a net revenue retention rate of 109%, which we expect to carry forward from 2025. This figure reflects the core growth of our main products to our existing clients. Additionally, our growth will be driven by product-led engines, including the adoption of new products, increased revenue from scaling enterprise clients, and the acquisition of new customers. It's worth noting that as we enter 2026, we are comparing against significant growth from last year, specifically 17% in Q1 and 21% in Q2. Therefore, our guidance for 9% growth in Q1 is against high year-on-year comparisons, suggesting that most of our growth will likely occur in the second half of the year. If we want to exceed our guidance, we would need to see faster adoption of the new products, which we've taken a cautious stance on in our planning. As we start the year, we have $8 million of NRR from at least two products we've highlighted, translating to $50 million in revenue. The speed of adoption will be critical for reaching the upper end of our growth expectations.

Youssef Squali, Analyst

Okay. That's helpful. And maybe just one other one for Mark. More of a high-level color kind of question. If we kind of zoom out historically, we've talked about growth in digital advertising as being like a base or how fast you guys can grow over time. The market is very large, penetration of measurement and verification remains relatively low across several pockets and you've highlighted, done a great job highlighting many of these. What needs to happen to get you guys back to growth to be at least in line with that of the overall digital ad market, which I don't know, the estimate to be maybe in the low double digits, maybe 12%, 13%?

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Yes, that's a great point, Youssef. This year, we expect digital advertising to grow around 6%. We anticipate better growth than that, which should serve as a positive factor for us, particularly with new products expected to drive acceleration. However, it's important to note that the 6% growth isn't uniform across all areas. We're witnessing sectors like social media continuing to attract more investment, and streaming is also capturing a larger share. Conversely, some areas are projected to grow at a much lower rate. Our focus needs to be on the segments that are expanding more rapidly, which will help us outpace overall digital market growth. As we mentioned earlier, we are already oriented towards the open web, and our aim now is to achieve 50% of our revenue from social media, streaming, and AI platforms, which are more closed environments. This strategy positions us where the growth dollars are headed, providing us with a more optimistic outlook for the future. That's why we emphasize those areas, as they align with our product innovations and ongoing investments, creating significant opportunities for future growth.

Operator, Operator

We have a next question from Maria Ripps with Canaccord.

Maria Ripps, Analyst

So as we think about moat customers sort of maturing on the platform and heading into year 2 with you, do you expect growth from this cohort to accelerate and maybe become a larger contributor to your overall growth? And I guess what are you seeing in terms of upsell rate from these customers? And what's factored in your outlook from this cohort?

Nicola Allais, CFO

Yes, Maria, you’re correct. We anticipate continued growth from the moat customers. We acquired these customers with our base product because they were transitioning from a platform that didn't offer some of our premium products. We've always mentioned that it would take 2 to 3 years to realize the full potential of these moat customers on our platform. Progress is strong with some clients, while others are slower since it takes time for them to allocate the budgets needed for our premium offerings. Everything is progressing as planned, and we expect their contribution to be greater in 2026 than in 2025. Many of these customers are quite large and present significant opportunities for upselling to our premium products.

Mark Zagorski, CEO

And I'll add one more thing. So I was going to add one more thing. Not specific to moat clients, but an interesting thing to look at is year 3 of our customer engagement actually has the highest growth rate in aggregate of all the years that we're engaged with customers. So on average, in aggregate, it's like 18% growth, year 2 with them, and 22% growth year 3 with our top clients. So it's an interesting take whereas our upsell cycle that we talk about usually takes several years and that third year of upsell is usually where the biggest is. So just kind of a rule of thumb when we think about all customers.

Operator, Operator

That concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the call back over to Mark Zagorski for closing remarks.

Mark Zagorski, CEO

Thank you all for joining us this evening. As we look ahead, we have confidence in the performance of our business and our priorities are clear: deepen adoption of core products with core customers, accelerate the growth of our solutions for Social, Streaming TV, and AI, and drive industry-leading margins by leveraging the power of AI. We appreciate your continued support and look forward to connecting with many of you at the upcoming conferences.

Operator, Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.